When Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, announced his retirement this month after four terms in the Senate, he set off a wave of political speculation similar to what we might expect from the retirement of a Supreme Court justice. After all — they’re both lifetime appointments. This isn’t literally true, of course, but it […]

North Carolina Republicans have controlled the state’s Ninth Congressional District since 1963. In November, the long streak appeared unbroken, and the party celebrated, relieved by a narrow 905-vote victory over the Democratic candidate. But on Tuesday, Republican voters will return to the polls to pick someone to represent the party in a do-over election after […]

WASHINGTON — Marrying the growing political muscle of women and veterans in American politics, a group of female freshmen lawmakers who served in the military and intelligence agencies are helping recruit more like them to run for office. Their new group, the Service First Women’s Victory Fund, will raise money for new female Democratic candidates […]

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not believe President Trump can be removed through impeachment — the only way to do it, she said this week, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so “big” he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a Democratic victory. That is something she worries about. “We have to […]

The big draw of the exuberant documentary “Knock Down the House” — about four women who ran for Congress in 2018 — is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. The former bartender turned first-time congresswoman is the most high-profile member of the freshman class of 2019 and scarcely needs an introduction. Her social media […]

HAVELOCK, N.C. — They met here at the Cherry Point Marine airfield two decades ago, the start of a friendship that would be forged over hundreds of hours in the cockpit of an EA-6B Prowler warplane over the Middle East, jamming enemy radar systems. One was in the pilot’s seat and the other navigated beside […]

WASHINGTON — The House Democratic campaign arm is on the verge of open warfare with the party’s rising liberal wing as political operatives close to Speaker Nancy Pelosi try to shut down primary challenges before what is likely to be a hard-fought campaign next year to preserve the party’s shaky majority. Progressive Democrats were infuriated […]

WASHINGTON — They huddle together on the House floor, conferring over what to do on a tough vote. They exchange group texts to consult on legislation and plan for the (increasingly rare) after-work drink, often with Bitmojis that capture their mood that day. They are frequently spotted walking together on Capitol Hill, huddled in what […]

If you’ve seen media coverage of the 29-year-old first-year representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it would be easy to think that she’s the first of her kind. Democrats and Republicans alike appear to be in a perpetual state of slack-jawed bewilderment as they watch her stand up to powerful lobbyists, stomp on shibboleths and clap back at […]

The future success of the Democratic Party depends on the crucial — but unsettled — allegiance of the nation’s growing Hispanic electorate. Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster and podcast host based in Miami, addressed the party’s Latino quandary in a December interview with The Associated Press: The question is not are Democrats winning the Hispanic […]

WASHINGTON — Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida came to Washington in 2017 with a reputation for bipartisan deal-cutting in the State Legislature — then spent a year idling behind the slow-moving minivans in the House Republican Conference like a Mustang stuck in traffic. So he decided to go the full Trump. With a near-constant presence […]

ALGONA, Iowa — For nearly two decades, Representative Steve King pummeled Republican primary challengers, dispatched Democrats, even a former Iowa governor’s wife, and glided to victory in his conservative district. He spent little energy on fund-raising, put few controls on his racist language and made little effort to hold town halls with constituents. Then in […]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Election meddling needn’t be a foreign power planting fictions on Facebook and courting the ragtag disciples of a real estate magnate. It can be local. It can be low-tech: going door to door to round up and forge absentee ballots in a candidate’s favor. That’s what apparently happened last fall in North […]

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court returned to the subject of partisan gerrymandering on Tuesday, considering for a second time in two years whether drawing election maps to help the party in power ever violates the Constitution. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the court’s newest member and the one who may possess the decisive vote, expressed […]

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returns to the subject of partisan gerrymandering on Tuesday, considering for a second time in two years whether drawing election maps to help the party in power can ever violate the Constitution. Last year’s cases, from Wisconsin and Maryland, raised the possibility that the court might decide, for the first […]

The level of attention surrounding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is, by any measure, extraordinary, bordering on Kardashian-grade. This goes for both the positive and the negative attention, each of which can feel more like a self-serving projection than an accurate representation of who Ocasio-Cortez is or what she’s doing. The congresswoman has become a handy and versatile […]

WASHINGTON — No issue animated the Democrats’ 2018 congressional campaigns like health care and the promises to expand access to insurance and to lower costs. But as House Democrats sit down to draft their vision of governance in the coming weeks, lawmakers find themselves badly divided on the issue that delivered their majority. Centrists from […]

WASHINGTON — A day after House Democrats retook the majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a message to her colleagues that would soon be adopted as a creed. “We know that the diversity in our ranks is a strength,” Ms. Pelosi wrote, “and a reflection of the American people that it is our great honor to […]

WASHINGTON — Democrats filed into the House chamber on Thursday — depleted and punch drunk — to vote for an overstuffed resolution condemning prejudice — and end, or so they hoped, a week of infighting that vividly illustrated the perils of policing their own speech. “I hope this puts an end to all of this,” […]

WASHINGTON — She paused to maintain her composure as she spoke. She recalled the attacks, and how her reports of them were handled. The despair, she said, almost made her leave the military. Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona and the first woman in the Air Force to fly in combat, told a hushed Senate […]